Digital lighting technologies, i.e., illumination based on semiconductor light sources, such as light-emitting diodes (LEDs), offer a viable alternative to traditional fluorescent, HID, and incandescent lamps. Functional advantages and benefits of LEDs include high energy conversion and optical efficiency, durability, lower operating costs, and many others. Recent advances in LED technology have provided efficient and robust full-spectrum lighting sources that enable a variety of lighting effects in many applications. Some of the fixtures embodying these sources feature a lighting module, including one or more LEDs capable of producing different colors, e.g., red, green, and blue, as well as a processor for independently controlling the output of the LEDs in order to generate a variety of colors and color-changing lighting effects, for example, as discussed in detail in U.S. Pat. Nos. 6,016,038 and 6,211,626, incorporated herein by reference.
Retail outlets may stock a number of different color temperature variants of LED lamps, and each of the color temperature variants may be offered in a number of different power ratings. Stocking each of the available color temperature variants in each of the power ratings would entail significant inventory cost, and would complicate and reduce the efficiency of the associated supply chain. This is less of an issue for configurable LED lamps whose color temperature can be configured after purchase, e.g. as disclosed in patent publication no. WO 2011/033409 A1, since obviously such lamps do not have different color temperature variants. However, such configurable LED lamps have a higher purchase price than the non-configurable LED lamps.
Today's LED lamps, particularly configurable LED lamps, are expensive compared with their traditional counterparts. Therefore LED lamps are unaffordable for some potential users, such as potential users in developing countries. Furthermore, the small size and relatively high purchase price of LED lamps, particularly the configurable LED lamps, makes them attractive to shop-lifters.